


Get Inside Their Clothes

by Mosca



Category: Phantom Thread (2017)
Genre: F/F, Misses Clause Challenge, Non-Linear Narrative, Strip Tease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 07:01:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17038985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: Alma is not the first woman who has taken off her dress for Cyril.





	Get Inside Their Clothes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mazily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazily/gifts).



> This story contains: time-period-consistent predatory secret lesbians, canon-consistent dubiously ethical romantic and sexual behavior, and meticulous fashion research.
> 
> Thanks to my beta readers for enduring my last-minute Yuletide shenanigans and fixing my Americanisms. The title is from "Green Gloves" by The National.

Alma took off her shoes as Cyril locked the door behind them. It was not the first time they had contrived themselves alone, but it was the first time in which a routine had become sufficiently established that Cyril could appraise Alma’s court shoes, burgundy suede with a subtle trim of gold piping, with a simple, “Well,” and Alma could reply with an over-the-shoulder smile that played more in her eyes than in her lips.

_Cyril was cautious with her at first. Reynolds attracted a different sort of woman than he had in his younger days: his muses indulged his fantasy of eternal youth as their ages retreated further behind his own. His mistresses now seemed to seek a stern and mercurial father, perhaps like their own, perhaps compensating for what their childhood lacked._

_They sought nothing from Cyril, most of the time. Alma didn’t until Reynolds fell ill, and she found herself in need of a substitute. Cyril performed the role better than Alma could have expected, better than Cyril herself had been prepared to do. She could praise parsimoniously and deflate with criticism. She could shift her stare from disdain to admiration to intrusion in a series of instants._

Alma took care with the column of hooks that had held her pencil skirt tight at her hip. Cyril knew that Alma had worn the skirt for her; Reynolds thought the style too bold, affecting mannishness. Cyril admired the way the forest green wool traced Alma’s curves from hip to thigh, then drew a smart, clean line past her knees. The skirt had a clever design, with a subtle kick-pleat in back so Alma’s knees could bend. Still, after Alma stepped out of the loosened skirt, lifting each leg over the waistband with a pointed toe, she shimmied her hips like a filly freed from her tack.

_Before Alma came Johanna, and before her was Nadine, and before her was a green-eyed Italian girl named Benedetta. She introduced herself as Benny, a nickname that Reynolds rejected, instead drawing out the syllables in an unconscious parody of her accent. Benny favored tailored suits that clung to her curves like wallpaper. Reynolds berated her for her poor taste even as he leered at her from behind. She came into Cyril’s office one evening as Cyril was balancing the books, asking to be remeasured. Nobody needed remeasuring after Reynolds was through with them. This was a plea for attention, for escape. Cyril found a tape in her bottom desk drawer, where she’d squirreled it some years prior. She called out the measurements but did not record them._

  _As Cyril looped the tape around Benny’s bust, Benny placed Cyril’s hand on her breast. Just as Cyril had not persuaded herself to dismiss Benny with a terse, “I’m busy,” she could not now convince herself to remove her hand and return to the charade of going about her business._

_“He will never touch me as passionately as you look at me,” Benny said as she unzipped her skirt, the line rehearsed but genuine._

Alma hesitated at the top button of her blouse. Cyril gazed at the tips of her pale fingers. She’d broken the nail of her left middle finger, and its ragged edge became a flaw that signified perfection. The mother-of-pearl buttons were fussy, resisting as Alma slid them to pull away further inches of champagne-colored silk. They revealed first a graceful trapezoid of milky skin, then a sky-blue brassiere, its cheerful color a surprise.

_The clothing austerity regulations during the War almost destroyed Cyril. Few buttons, no pleats, minimal embellishment, restrictions on yardage and fabric types. It wasn’t as if anyone could afford a bespoke gown, even with years of coupons saved. Reynolds sketched fanciful garments for balls and receptions that might never be held, if the world succeeded in bombing itself to hell and back, growing maniacal in the pace of his output and impractical in his concepts._

_Cyril volunteered her skills to the war effort, measuring recruits to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, tailoring their jackets, mending their hems. If they died, they would do so looking impeccable._

Alma snapped a stocking free from her girdle and rolled it down her calf, forming a perfect ring of nylon. Reynolds despised synthetic fabrics, but he’d never had to tug a bunched silk stocking, or to limp through an afternoon after punching a hole with his big toe, while the delicate fibers unraveled and disintegrated. Alma leant over her knee as she rolled down her second stocking, lips pursed in concentration, shoulders angled to give Cyril the best possible view of her décolletage.

_Cyril was sixteen the first time she stole a girl’s heart away from Reynolds. Rescued a heart, she wanted to say, but she didn’t flatter herself that her motives were purer or her demeanor gentler than his. She could offer no safety. A lifelong bachelor with a wandering eye was a disappointment to society, but a woman with a taste for the soft curves and lilting voices of women was a deviant to be shrouded in spinsterhood._

_Over the years, Cyril had forgotten the first girl’s name, but she remembered the way the girl’s ringlets fell from the mass of hair piled on her head – the fashion then, nearly impossible to maintain and therefore especially prized when kept neat, as Cyril had always done. But the girl’s dishevelment had made her more delicate, more alluring. Cyril found her sobbing at the foot of the stairs at a dance and had meant only to comfort her with a clean handkerchief and an arm around her shoulder. “I had expected a kiss tonight, and now I shall never be kissed,” the girl sniffled._

_One compulsive kiss became another, then faded into a lifetime of clandestine kisses. The women of Cyril’s memory blurred in the distance, no longer distinguished by the fashions of trim and silhouette. They became one beautiful shadow, more breathtaking in the aggregate than they could ever hope to be as individuals. Most women – most people – were unremarkable. Only desire and hindsight elevated any from the rest._

Alma did not delay the final stage of her disrobement. She released the clasp of her brassiere and let the straps slide down her arms, shaking her hands so it fell to the floor. She removed her girdle and knickers in a few smooth motions, stretching them away from her skin with both hands flat down the front, flipping them over at her knee as if folding an omelette, and stepping neatly out of them.

Naked, Alma faced Cyril. “Your turn, then?”


End file.
